I don't normally pay attention to the fact-checking websites, but if PolitiFact managed to piss off half the progressive job-killing entitlement-state blogosphere, it must be doing something right.
See: "
Lie of the Year 2011: ‘Republicans voted to end Medicare’" (at
Memeorandum).
PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.
Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year....
With a few small tweaks to their attack lines, Democrats could have been factually correct, said Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "I actually think there is no need to cut out the qualifiers and exaggerate," he said.
At times, Democrats and liberal groups were careful to characterize the Republican plan more accurately. Another claim in the ad from the Agenda Project said the plan would "privatize" Medicare, which received a Mostly True rating from PolitiFact. President Barack Obama was also more precise with his words, saying the Medicare proposal "would voucherize the program and you potentially have senior citizens paying $6,000 more."
But more often, Democrats and liberals overreached:
• They ignored the fact that the Ryan plan would not affect people currently in Medicare -- or even the people 55 to 65 who would join the program in the next 10 years.
• They used harsh terms such as "end" and "kill" when the program would still exist, although in a privatized system.
• They used pictures and video of elderly people who clearly were too old to be affected by the Ryan plan. The DCCC video that aired four days after the vote featured an elderly man who had to take a job as a stripper to pay his medical bills.
"Both parties use entitlements as political weapons," Ryan said in an interview with PolitiFact. "Republicans do it to Democrats; Democrats do it to Republicans. So I knew that this would be a political weapon that the other side would use against us."
Liberal bloggers and columnists contend it's accurate to say Republicans voted to end Medicare. Left-leaning websites such as Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and The New Republic said PolitiFact's analysis was wrong, as did New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
Well, that's a who's who of the America-hating market-killing left.
And sooner than you can scream, LIAR!,
Paul Krugman is off the blocks to smear PolitiFact as "useless and irrelevant."
And Krugman links to one of the left's premiere dishonest spin masters and lie merchants, Steve "Buttfreak" Benen, "
PolitiFact ought to be ashamed of itself."
Right.
That's just the kind of
faux outrage we can expect from the morally bankrupt losers of the left, now screaming like stuck pigs at being called out for their epic dishonesty and fear-mongering.
Three cheers for PolitiFact.
